This post is a combination of three things:
1. An announcement of my forthcoming horror short story collection, WHERE THE SHADOWS ARE SHOWN, due out in September through my own small press, Josh’s Worst Nightmare.
2. Rationalization of publishing the book through Amazon (who, from this point on, will be called Nozama, the Dark One).
3. Confession of succumbing to the lesser of two evils.
I bet you think I’m about to trash traditional publishers here, eviscerating everyone from the “Big Four” to indie presses. Sorry to disappoint you ghouls, but that’s not what this piece is about.
I don’t know about you, but when I want a beer, I almost always go for a microbrew. Not only do they taste better to me, not only am I supporting a small business, but because craft brewers are free to experiment with a diversity of flavors, they’re far more likely to create my favorites.
Now, I’m not here to rail against the popular mass-produced breweries, and I’ll even drink one if it’s the best option around. While it may not always suit my particular palette, at least I know what I’m getting.
I feel the same way about horror fiction. While over the decades I’ve enjoyed authors whose books have been published by large mainstream publishing houses, my favorites these days tend to come from small and indie presses.
For those writers who’ve gotten short fiction rejected (aka every writer), I recently learned something that might help put it all in perspective.
THE JEWISH BOOK OF HORROR, the anthology I edited for Denver Horror Collective (DHC) in late 2021, won a bronze medal in the Independent Publisher Book Awards, a Silver medal in the 666 Awards, and had previously made it onto the preliminary ballot for another well-known award. Meanwhile, at a horror writers conference, I lost count of the authors who told me they loved the book, which sold well at the DHC table, as it has literally around the world.
While readers are hungry for Jewish horror as a unique exploration of the larger genre, I think I finally understand why THE JEWISH BOOK OF HORROR was one of the only Jewish horror anthologies ever released (all by small presses). And why nearly every working author who also writes Jewish horror tells me they have difficulty getting those particular stories published.
Because while pitching my Jewish folk horror novel (CHARWOOD was ultimately published in 2023 by Aggadah Try It, the Jewish horror imprint of Madness Heart Press) to the editor of a large, established horror fiction publisher, one of my sneaking suspicions as to what’s been turning off so many gatekeepers was finally confirmed.
The second-most common question a horror author gets after, “Where do you get your ideas?” is, “Can you make any money doing this?”
The short answer is, “No.” The slightly longer answer is, “Not really.” But the honest answer is, “It depends.”
Josh's Worst Nightmare 